by Daniel Onyango

Created on: November 19, 2008   Last Updated: February 05, 2009

I know I'm going to receive a lot of flak for this, but I have to say that you can't have your cake and eat it. With regard to social life, there are three types of personalities: connoisseurs, part-timers and freaks. Most Professional males fall between part-time socialites and the latter. Successful professional males cluster around the right end of the continuum, those whom the dotcom generation refer to as geeks. As you all are aware, geeks are geniuses in their areas of expertise, but complete wrecks in matters of social life. There are exceptions of course, as in every sphere of life.

I should know what I'm talking about because to reach the apex of professional success, it usually means that you are virtually eating, breathing and dreaming your calling. Thus, the first major problem of dating facing our type is time. To get to know the extent of the value of time in any profession, you only need to see the growing number of the so called working breakfasts and working lunches.

No woman worth her time would bear the agony of being bored with your professional mumbo-jumbo over her first lunch date, no matter how much she admires your success. In retrospect I can see how I misconstrued the odd quizzical look in the faces of my female companions for rapt interest, as I rattled off our company's weekly returns.

A male professional mind is computer-like. His mind is already fed with the data regarding the kind of female species he is looking for. So, during a date his data-bank keeps ticking off the qualities he's looking for, as they talk over lunch or during a ball. Woe betides her if she falls below the standards stored in his sharp mind. Most male professionals are perfectionists, and would insist on keeping the high standards they use to measure success in social-partnership, as they do in business. This can be confirmed by a dating specialist who confesses that many dates are wrecked by a non-compromising attitude. A parallel can be drawn to this mind-set by the many failed marriages among the most successful male professionals. The usual complaint from the female partner is lack of companionship.

In some instances, male professionals react to an insecure past. Some have been victims of gold-digging females and so often cannot help vetting prospective female companions the way you would do a job-seeker. Due to this mistrust, first dates are often tense and fraught with interview-like questionnaires. A female friend confessed to me that a male colleague in

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